All Quiet on the Eastern Front
by Onnik Krikorian

PTGHAVAN, Armenia - In the first of six operations to save her upper arm, the bone in Armine's elbow was removed. The ten-year-old hadn't even been born when conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan broke out over Nagorno Karabagh and had barely turned two by the time an armistice was signed in 1994. Nevertheless, one year after the ceasefire, the conflict claimed another victim.

Armine however, doesn't want to talk about it.

Her mother though, says that when a group of civilians ran into a landmine in an attempt to escape cross-border gunfire, Armine was caught in the blast. Shrapnel from the explosion ripped through her right arm and across her chest, scarring and disabling her for life. She still suffers from nervous anxieties and depression today.

Tim Straight, Head of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Armenia, stumbled upon Armine last year. "If she doesn't get proper examination and a plan for treatment soon, her muscles which are functioning minimally now, will wither and her arm may have to be amputated," he says. "This means she will never marry or attain any social status. This is a catastrophe for her whole life."

But while the concern is genuine, the issue is more than just that of one little girl living in a remote corner of Armenia. According to official statistics, over 70,000 people, including an undetermined number of refugees, have been displaced from the border as a result of the war. Although Nagorno Karabagh might seem a world away from the idyllic forests of Tavoush, local residents nevertheless paid a price.

Whole villages situated along the Armenian border were reduced to rubble by incessant shelling and landmines situated along the 900 kilometer border with Azerbaijan have resulted in over seventy casualties in the Tavoush region alone. Eighteen people have been killed and eleven wounded by incidents with landmines in the Ararat region. Further south in Siunik, there have been over thirty deaths and forty-four injuries since 1994.

The Armenian military conducted partial mine clearance in the region until 1999 when material and technical resources ran out.

Rehabilitation of the border regions

Because those displaced by cross-border skirmishes, landmines and poor socio-economic conditions have found temporary accommodation in nearby villages, the low visibility of the problem has manifested itself as a lack of attention. The Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Internally Displaced People (IDPs), Dr. Francis Deng, highlighted those concerns when he visited Armenia in May 2000.

Gagik Yeganyan, Head of the State Department for Migration and Refugees, says that for the past two years, authorities have started to take the matter seriously. "On 14 December 2000, a plan for the Post Conflict Rehabilitation of the Bordering Territories of the Republic of Armenia was approved by the Government," he explains.

More than 23,000 houses, 78 education centers, 62 medical centers, 512km of potable and 724km of irrigation pipes, and 575km of roads were damaged by cross-border shelling and the total cost to rehabilitate the border is estimated at over $80 million. Under the Government initiative, an estimated 39,000 people will return to their homes and conditions for 28,000 who have returned already will be improved.

However, the regional authorities estimate that as much as 9,000 hectares of Tavoush is mined, fuelling concerns that the landmine problem in Armenia is greater than many realize. According to Jemma Hasratian of the Armenian National Committee of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), it is difficult to fully estimate the extent of the problem given that both regular and irregular forces were responsible for laying mines and few accurate maps exist.

"Nobody knows how many mines there are," she says, "but we're working with the figure of 50,000."

Mine Clearance

Although Armenia and Azerbaijan were prevented from receiving US military assistance while the dispute over Nagorno Karabagh remained unresolved, the embargo was officially lifted on 29 March 2002 after both republics offered their assistance to the United States following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

On 16 March 2002, a US-financed demining center to train military personal opened in Etchmiadzin, twenty minutes from the Armenian capital. Lieutenant-Colonel Eric von Tersch, military attaché at the US Embassy in Yerevan, however, says that the center would have opened regardless of the war in Afghanistan and heightened American interest in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

A year and a half earlier, Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian soldiers had already simultaneously trained in humanitarian mine clearance at a military base in the Republic of Georgia under the "Beecroft Initiative," a confidence and security building measure aimed at preventing injuries and deaths from landmines in the south Caucasus.

"We really had the parameters of this going before the attacks," explains von Tersch. "What 911 did was show that there was a common interest here and in the United States. Our common goals became much more obvious after 11 September and there was an increased level of trust on both sides. There was simply greater momentum."

US military assistance totaling $4.3 million was allocated to the Armenian Government after sanctions against Azerbaijan were suspended but the cost of the demining center was financed separately. Training will be facilitated through the RONCO Consulting Corporation and the US military. Start-up and operating costs for this year alone is $2.1 million.

Eighty conscript soldiers man the base and receive an additional stipend of $10 a month on top of their $3 a month salaries. Lloyd Carpenter, one of RONCO's staff members in Armenia, says that by the end of 2003 the demining center should become self-sustainable through contributions from the international donor community and the Armenian Diaspora.

Although Armenia has not acceded to the International Mine Ban Treaty, the Government has nonetheless started to gather information on the arable and pasture land, orchards, and woodland affected. Von Tersch, however, is keen to stress that the main priority for the demining center will be the safety of civilians in mine-affected areas.

"Because it's a sensitive issue, it's not our intention to push anyone into demining defensive positions," he says. "We are concerned with humanitarian demining and are working with the military to develop the capacity to go into civilian areas in cooperation with the regional authorities to pull those mines out."

First published by The Armenian Weekly, 2002.